“How can you possibly know that?” he asked.
She glanced at Blue. He gave her a small, almost invisible shrug. They were about to take a big risk, letting Shea know who Blue was. She tilted her head just a little—a question: Should I tell him?
“She knows it,” Blue said, “because she’s been working with me.”
Shea gathered himself, letting go of the table. It looked like he was trying to pull the remaining bits of his dignity together.
“And am I supposed to know who you are?” he asked, as if he were a bouncer trying to prevent Blue from coming into a club.
Blue gave him a crooked smile. “Yeah, you’re supposed to know who I am since you use my name often enough. I’m Bluebeard.”
Chapter 42
Shea screamed.
It was a loud, piercing scream, filled with panic and dread. He backed up again, slammed the table against the wall, then ducked and tried to half run, half crawl to the bedroom.
Neither Jodi nor Blue moved. They watched him, Jodi with surprise. Then she glanced at Blue. He didn’t look surprised at all. Just sad, and resigned.
How many people had reacted to him that way before? And he had always felt he deserved it.
She wondered if he felt like he deserved it now.
Shea reached the door of the bedroom, shoved it open, and launched himself inside. Only he couldn’t get past the mounds of clothing. The clothing tumbled around him, and he fell, landing so hard that the floor shook.
“I’m not going to harm you,” Blue said calmly. “In fact, if you believe my history, which is now in some doubt, but if you do, then you’d see that I only go after women. And attractive women at that. Jodi here should be afraid of me, not you.”
She looked sideways at Blue. He still looked resigned, but she thought she might have seen something else. A bit of impatience? Anger?
If looked at in terms of the fairy tale, Shea was being ridiculous. But in terms of what had been happening to Shea, Jodi didn’t entirely blame him. He’d been slowly turning into Bluebeard—warning all the women away from him before he hurt them, using Bluebeard’s name—and now Bluebeard was confronting him in his own safe space.
“It’s all right, really,” Jodi said in her most soothing voice. This was where her magic came in. Soothe and comfort, guide and ease. “If it weren’t for you, Gregory, we wouldn’t know what was going on with Blue here.”
“Me?” Shea said, his voice a raspy squeak. Apparently that scream had scraped his vocal chords. “What did I do?”
“Well, nothing, actually,” Jodi said. “I know that’s hard for you to believe, because you have fragments of memory in which you’re stalking women—”
“I’m not stalking anyone. I haven’t left this room in weeks. At least, that I know of.” Shea looked up at both of them, a pleading expression on his face. “And that’s me on the television, and if I fall asleep…”
“You know those women, right?” Blue said.
“In passing,” Shea said. “I don’t know where they live. I didn’t even know the name of one of them until the TV mentioned it.”
Blue nodded. “That’s very familiar. It’ll get worse unless we can slow the spell down.”
“Reverse it,” Jodi said firmly. She didn’t want Shea to think that what she was about to do would fail. She had learned that the thought of failure, especially with magic, often guaranteed it.
“As we were investigating this,” Blue said, “we initially thought it was a curse. But it’s not. It’s more complicated than that.”
“It’s a spell,” Jodi said. “You’re a Charming, right?”
Shea lowered his head, shaking it. “Not like the real Charmings. My family is hereditary royalty without the wealth. My father used to say everything was diluted from the money to the royal heritage to the magic. I might be able to make you smile, but I don’t have that wowza ability that the real Charmings have.”
Wowza ability. Jodi liked that phrase. It was accurate. It was how she had felt when she first saw Blue, and she had blamed it on the charm. And then she saw him turn the charm on, and she realized what she had felt had been minor compared with what he could actually do. Still, wowza. Wowza.
She didn’t look at him at this moment. She didn’t want Shea to see her personal reaction to Blue.
So she nodded instead. “But your magic, it’s charm magic, right?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Shea said. “Not much more. I thought I’d come here and actually have a better life in the Greater World. No worries about the fact that I’m seventy-second in line to the throne, which bugs the hell out of my dad, no refusing jobs because they were too demeaning for a Charming. I could be my own man here. You were really kind when I first got here. That’s why I let you in. Because you were kind.”
And Jodi didn’t even remember him.
At least she had been kind. She always tried to be kind, but in Hollywood that was hard. This place called itself the Dream Factory, but it never explained what kind of factory it was. Some factories make things. Some crush things and make them into something else.
Hollywood was the second type. It crushed dreams and made them into something that seemed dreamlike, the cheesy kind, the kind that peeled around the edges. And for some people on the periphery of the Dream Factory, well, those people realized along the way that dreams weren’t just fluffy and golden and beautiful. There was an entire other subset of dreams, and those were called nightmares.
That was what had captured Shea. Jodi had lost other clients to it, mostly in mundane, mortal ways. Never before had she had a client whose life was destroyed by a spell.
“I’ll be honest with you,” she said, still using her comfort magic. “I heard about what was happening to you, and I had to find you. I wanted to see if your aura had the same problems that Blue’s does.”
“Does it?” Shea asked, looking at her with complete fear.
“Yes.” She decided not to tell him that his spell was weaker than Blue’s because she had no idea if what she was going to do would hurt him or not. Again, she wanted to manage Shea’s expectations.
“Did you fix his?” Shea asked.
Blue started to answer, but Jodi jumped in. Again, she had to handle this delicately, and she wasn’t sure Blue could be delicate.
“Not yet,” Jodi said. “His has a secondary issue. He has been under that spell for centuries.”
“You mean he’s still dangerous?” Shea squeaked.
Jodi couldn’t imagine a less scary stalker. Whoever had chosen this guy to be the Fairy Tale Stalker must have done it as some kind of joke.
“I’m not dangerous,” Blue said with more conviction than Jodi expected from him. “The spell is. But I’ve neutralized it many times in the past, and it’s under control now.”
If he meant now as in right this instant, then he was right. It was under control. But if he meant now as in currently, as in this week, he was lying his ass off.
Either way, he sounded convincing.
“You fix him first, then me,” Shea said.
“If only it were that easy,” Jodi said. She pulled out one of the kitchen chairs and sat down. She had been uncomfortable standing. She wanted Shea to regain his balance, and she hoped this would help.
Shea watched her closely. Blue did not move away from his post near the door.
“I’m sure you remember your first Principles of Magic Course,” she said.
Shea’s eyes narrowed. The last thing she wanted him to tell her was that as a Charming, he had been exempted from school. She knew some of the royalty in some of the Kingdoms did that.
But he didn’t say anything.
“One of the basic tenants of magic,” she said, “one of the ones we get taught in the first weeks of class. The older the spell…”
He let out a gust of air. “…the stronger it is,” he finished for her.
Thank God he remembered. That made her story believable. She didn’t have to explain the weakness
in his magic compared with Blue’s.
“I needed to see your aura to see if the spell matched. It does, and it’s engulfing your magic.”
“What does that mean?” Shea said.
“I’m not exactly sure,” Jodi said. “But it’s also ripping your aura apart, taking all the strength out of it by reshaping it. I believe I can organize your magic and pull the bad spell out.”
Blue looked sharply at her, clearly surprised. Blue had some guile, but not a lot, and she had caught him off-guard.
“So let me ask you the most important question of all,” she said, deliberately ignoring Blue. “How long have you been suffering under this spell?”
“I don’t know,” Shea moaned.
She was beginning to dislike him. She didn’t like whiners. Was it possible to dislike a Charming? She hadn’t liked Blue much when he was drinking, but then, she hadn’t interacted with him. She had only watched him from afar. Still, she hadn’t liked him. Was it the diminished charm or had it been the effects of the spell?
Or both?
“When did the symptoms first show up?” she asked, feeling her patience thin.
“What do you mean by symptoms?” he asked, his voice thick, like he was going to cry.
“When did women start being afraid of you?” Blue snapped. “Did it happen before you got here?”
Shea looked up at him, like he was looking at the Devil himself. Shea took a deep breath. “Well…” he said slowly, “my last girlfriend in the Kingdom told me I had gotten really creepy.”
“Creepy how?” Blue asked.
Apparently he was getting through to Shea better than she was.
“She said she just didn’t like the way I was treating her,” Shea said. “I didn’t ask for clarification. She was starting to grate on me too.”
“How long ago was that?” Jodi asked.
He leaned back, beginning to look relaxed for the first time since she arrived. If relaxed was the right word. Maybe… a bit more comfortable. Not as tense. A little less stressed.
“Just before I got here,” he said.
“More than a year ago, right?” Jodi asked.
“Yeah,” he said, sounding surprised that she knew.
“That’s a much more recent spell than mine,” Blue said.
Shea gave Jodi the most hopeful look she had seen from him. “You think you can fix this?”
“I can try,” she said. “I know how to disentangle spells, and how to organize magic. Those are part of my magical skill set. However, if this turns out to be a curse, then I won’t have done anything.”
Shea clenched a hand into a fist, then loosened it again. Jodi recognized the movement. It was a relaxation technique taught by one of the full body coaches the studios liked. Then Shea rubbed that hand on his thigh, took a deep breath, and looked up at Blue.
“Would you let her do this?”
“I don’t let her do anything,” Blue said, and Jodi had to look down so that the involuntary smile didn’t cross her face. That was a relationship answer, and Shea hadn’t asked a relationship question.
“I mean, reorganize your magic? Would you let her do that to you?”
Blue paused. Jodi’s heart started hammering. Was he going to ruin this? Was he going to get in the way?
“She has a point about the age of the spell,” Blue said. “I think I’d want some magical backup if she tried to mess with my aura. It’s been broken for a long, long time.”
“But me, I’m a year or so in,” Shea said softly. “So it’ll be okay.”
“That’s what we’re hoping,” Jodi said. “I’m not going to give you any guarantees.”
Shea let out a barking laugh. “That’s exactly what you said to me when I told you that I wanted to make my name in Hollywood. You said there are no guarantees. And now I’m famous.”
“But not with your name,” Blue said.
Shea’s smile faded, and he nodded once. “You’re right. Not with my name.”
“We can fix this,” Jodi said. “Just let me try.”
Shea stood up. He was shaking visibly. “Are you sure you don’t want magical backup?”
Jodi tried to imagine Selda here or Tank or anyone else who might have the power to contain some of the magic she might unleash. The problem with her powerful friends was simple: they wanted to be in charge. They would argue with her over every point. She didn’t need argument.
She needed practice. She needed a relatively painless first attempt.
And she didn’t want to insult Shea by telling him that.
“I think we’ll do fine without the backup,” she said. “Besides, Blue will be here.”
“You have other magic skills besides Charm?” Shea asked.
“You’d be surprised at what I can do,” Blue said.
And, as Jodi stood to start her work on Shea, she realized that once again, Blue hadn’t answered an important question directly.
Chapter 43
As Jodi stood up to help the Fairy Tale Stalker, Blue realized just how small she was. And fragile.
And precious.
He made himself take a deep breath. She knew what she was doing, or at least, that was what she said.
He had to trust her.
He hadn’t trusted anyone for a very long time.
The stalker—Gregory. Shea. Jeez, Blue wished he knew the man’s real name. His magical name. The name he was born with. The name that gave the person who knew it very real power.
All of this talk of magical backup made Blue very nervous. More nervous than he had been.
Although, if he was honest with himself, he had been nervous from the moment they had arrived in this hotel room/apartment/suite thingie. He recognized it as part of that downward slide. Only he had had his in the Kingdom, and then he had come here, continuing it. He couldn’t quite remember how he had gone from crappy impersonal apartments to crappy impersonal hotel rooms to crappy impersonal patches of earth underneath bridges, but he had done all of that, hugging a bottle.
The stalker—Blue couldn’t think of him as anything else—stood up. He weighed almost double what Jodi did. If he got physical as she tried to disentangle the evil spell from his aura, then he could do some real damage, maybe even before Blue got over there.
“One thing before you start,” Blue said, amazed at the firmness in his own voice.
They both looked at him, almost as if they had forgotten he was there.
He didn’t look at Jodi. He looked directly at the stalker.
“I need to know your real name,” Blue said.
“Blue,” Jodi said in that tone he was beginning to recognize as a reprimand. She had never really used it with him before.
“He wants magical backup. You need magical backup. We can’t have it without knowing who this guy is. His real name, not the name he uses here.”
The stalker swallowed hard. His eyes moved from side to side—shifty, untrustworthy—and then they settled on Jodi, and in them, Blue saw need. This guy was scared.
Blue hoped scared triumphed over all that training everyone got from babyhood on. Keep your name secret. Don’t tell anyone who you are. If someone you don’t know asks your name, lie. Make something up.
Blue wasn’t even sure how he would know if the guy was lying. He could only hope that Jodi would figure it out.
“Gregor,” the stalker said. “Young Gregor of Kent.”
Kent. There was always a Kent. Every damn Kingdom had a Kent. It was like the name “Springfield” in America. Every state had a Springfield. Every Kingdom had a Kent.
“Which Kingdom?” Blue asked.
Young Gregor looked down. If he was a boy, he might have scuffed the floor with his bare foot, kicking imaginary dirt. At that moment, Blue realized just how young this guy was.
He was a baby. He probably hadn’t even hit his first century yet. And he was scared.
“The Fifty-Fifth Kingdom,” Young Gregor said with a touch of shame. “I’m from the Fifty-Fifth Kingdom.�
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Blue felt a stab of pity. Not only was Young Gregor seventy-somethingth to the throne, but he was seventy-somethingth to the throne of an insignificant Kingdom. The Brothers Grimm only made it to the first fifteen Kingdoms, and the last five were one of those whirlwind tours, filled with wine and food and probably dancing girls.
A couple of the other fairy tale writers had visited some of the Kingdoms with numbers up to twenty-five, and there were rumors that Oscar Wilde caused some real havoc in the sixty-ninth Kingdom, but for the most part, no one—no mortal—had been to the Kingdoms above twenty. Not well enough to write the Kingdom stories as fairy tales.
Not well enough to make them part of the mythos that had blended into the Greater World.
The stalker had to be telling the truth. No one from the Kingdoms admitted they were from the lesser Kingdoms unless they actually were.
“Satisfied now?” Young Gregor asked. The words were challenging, but the tone wasn’t.
“Yes,” Blue said.
He wasn’t sure what he would do with the information. He really didn’t have other magic besides his Charm. Except for the magic that everyone had. He had the ability to send all of them to the Fates, which had the benefit of freezing time enough to prevent a haphazard death or some other catastrophe—unless the Fates themselves decided not to intervene.
Blue supposed that would have to do.
He would have to trust Jodi.
He didn’t want to trust Jodi.
But he saw no other choice.
Chapter 44
Jodi stood in front of Young Gregor, near the half-closed door of the bedroom. To her right was the bathroom, and to her left, a closet. Behind her, the table and Blue. She wished she could see Blue, but she knew it was better not to see him.
He would distract her. She couldn’t afford a distraction right now.
She didn’t like the half-open door. She had no idea what she could conjure up in that back room or what Young Gregor had conjured up.
“Excuse me just a moment,” she said and reached around him. The very movement made him jump. He scrambled away from her as if she frightened him.
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